Bob's Trouble

When Wisconsin's long-ailing Progressive Party died of malnutrition last spring (TIME, March 25), Progressive Senator Robert M. LaFollette hastily jumped back to the Republican fold. Wisconsin's old line G.O.P. stalwarts cried that he was just a New Deal wolf in ersatz wool. Republican State Chairman Tom Coleman began stringing barbed wire at the political water holes, vowed to keep the last of the LaFollettes off the G.O.P. ticket.

Last week, on the eve of the G.O.P. state convention, these reactionary activities were rebuked by Senator Robert A. Taft, currently the mastermind of Republican strategy.

Wrote he: "I hope LaFollette is successful. ... In the long run he will be closer to me than Morse [Oregon's vocally liberal Senator Wayne Morse]." Then he indicated that there was more to his sudden affection for LaFollette, and to Coleman's frenzied opposition to him, than met the politically naked eye. "Coleman appears to be tied up with Stassen," wrote presidential-hopeful Taft. "I don't think LaFollette will ever get into that campaign because he disapproves of Stassen's foreign policy."

But Coleman's regulars refused to be drawn afield. They belabored Bob LaFollette as a turncoat, renegade and opportunist. Glowing happily with exertion, they voted to back ex-Marine Captain Joseph R. McCarthy, 35, for the Senate seat. For good measure, they also turned thumbs down on brindled Governor Walter S. Goodland, 83, whose crotchety independence has irked many an old-line party man. For his place, they endorsed gladhanding, grey-haired Delbert J. Kenny, a former state Legion commander.

In Washington, Bob LaFollette was unperturbed. He prepared to campaign for the primary as if nothing had happened. So did Governor Goodland. But many a Wisconsin voter sighed. Progressives or no Progressives, there they were, still trying to decide: "What is a Wisconsin Republican?"

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